Bifurcating Britain: Land's End to John O'Groats on foot with a beaver

Thursday, May 1, 2014

17707 kms: Melbourne-Sydney-Hong Kong-London

Bad: Completely forgot to bring Wesley. How can you bifurcate a country with a beaver if you forget your beaver?

Good: Premium Economy, Virgin Atlantic.

Left: Me and the boy at Honkers

Right Top: It still looks like airplane food

Right Bottom: Pseudo-Wesley

Bad: For some reason we were amongst the last to board. We had to rush our pre-takeoff champagne.

Good: Although we were meant to be in a central row of three, the ladies in the two seats by the window were with the third person in our row and asked if we would mind swapping. Um, no.

Good: Not only did we have premium economy, and the window seats, we also had the bulkhead—no-one in front of us to put back their seat into our personal plane space.

Bad: Having the bulkhead means you have to wait until the seatsbelt sign is turned off to play with your TV. No playing poker while the plane takes off. You also can't have anything in front of you and so it is, like, hours, or minutes at least, before you can take off your shoes.

Good: Crockery, glass, metal, linen.

Bad: Was it the build up, the night shifts, the mad rush to finish (didn't) the Brownie uniforms, the increasing burden of age? I had the most annoying headache for most of the flight. V—— plied me with progressively stronger medications and in the end I tossed and turned and drooled all over my replacement Wesley (a substandard and perfectly ordinary travel pillow). I missed out on a perfectly fabulous eight-at-least movie marathon.

Good: I did watch one movie per flight and enjoyed them both, even though water came from my eyes both times. I watched Frozen (I wish I could live in an amazing green dress in a frozen castle on a hill and that a marshmallow monster would keep people from my door, but it seems the theme implies we should let people into our hearts to warm them, goddam!) and Saving Mr Banks (which effectively says the same thing, and aren't Emma Thompson's calves beautiful?)

Bad: Arriving in London at 5:35 am.

Good: Not a single solitary person in front of us in the immigration queue (I was in that queue last time for an hour and a half and found out all about quilting shops in New England—luckily that is something that I am quite interested in, even if I didn't know I was).

Good: London. Just good. A spiritual home. A journey beginning. So happy to be back.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Welcome:

One of the one-hundred-and-one things I'd like to do before the end of this life and the beginning of the next is walk from Land's End to John O'Groats. This blog follows my attempt to tick that off the list. It will take me a while: the typical walking route is approximately 1200 miles or 1900 kilometers. Every year I spend a few weeks walking as far as I can. Every year there is a B-based theme.

Year One (2009): Land's End to Bath. 21 Days. 404.2 kms. Bifurcating Britain in a Ballgown with a Beaver.

Year Two (2010): Bath to Formby. 23 Days. 401.5 kms. A Beatnik Bifurcating Britain with a Beaver.

Year Three (2012): Liverpool (backtracked from Formby) toInversnaid. 42 Days. 666.2 kms. A Boho, an inverted Hobo, and a Beaver, Basically Bifurcating Britain.

About Me

Me? I like Pina Colada (but mainly if its made from white rum and strawberries) and getting caught in the rain (yeah, I just like that). I like lists, Scrabble and puppies, and semi-colons are my favourite punctuation (em dashes are a close second). You? I guess you just need to like hearing me waffle on!